Love Is
by TheArtOfDistance
Summary: Beckett's head and her heart are telling her different things. Caskett one-shot.


Disclaimer: Castle and all its associated characters and plotlines don't belong to me. If they did, I'd be rich enough to afford a laptop with an unplugged battery life of longer than 3 minutes.

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><p><em>I love you, damn it.<em>

Josh's words still echo in her mind, hours later. She sits at her kitchen table, staring at her hands, and remembering the exasperation and frustration on his face. _I love you_. They should have been sweet words - or bittersweet - but instead...instead they felt like a demand. He wants her to go to Haiti with him, and he thinks that his love for her, however that's defined, is a reason that she should do it. _I love you, damn it. Can't you do this one little thing for me?_

But that's not what love is.

Love is a man signing the papers that will let his baby girl go away to college months early, not because he wants her to, but because that's what she needs if she's going to have any chance at a future with the boy she's sure she'll love forever.

Love is a man keeping a furnished bedroom set aside for a mercurial mother, who may or may not need it, who may or may not have any funds of her own in any given week, because he understands that's just the way she is and wouldn't change her for the world.

Love is a man with a bag load of every conceivable takeout - not a minor thing, in a city like New York - and grief in his eyes, offering to step away from something he loves because he thinks it's best. Because he thinks he's caused immeasurable harm, when really what he's done is to give someone the only really hope she's had in years.

Beckett closes her eyes. She shouldn't be thinking this. She's never been this confused, not even as a teenager in the throngs of first love. She's always known what she's doing, who she's with, where a relationship is going. But this time? This time she's caught up in a maelstrom of uncertainty, logic telling her to go right, and emotion telling her to go left, so that she's forever whirling around, tripping over her own feet, unable to decide which direction to take or even to figure out where the hell she stands.

Her head tells her that Josh is exactly the man she should want. Attractive, good-humoured, ambitious enough to understand when long hours keep her away from home and slaving away at her murder board. A good, dedicated man, passionate about saving lives, with a wild side that thrills to midnight motorbike rides the same way that hers does. A man that's so very like her in so very many ways that she should be ecstatic about how perfect they are for each other.

But she's not. Her heart - damned fool muscle that it is - keeps insisting that Josh is too _much_ like her for them to ever be content, just like Will and Tom and countless other men she's dated since her mother's death. Her heart keeps pulling out memories that make her smile, then saying _See? That's what you really want_ when her lips curve involuntarily.

Castle, offering a takeout coffee cup with a theatrical flourish.

Castle, ditching his date in his eagerness to run off with her and investigate a pet shop full of snakes.

Castle, leering at her good-naturedly over a hand of cards and a pile of poker chips.

It's not even the dramatic moments that cause her such confusion - the heart-pounding, life-or-death situations where he proves, time and time again, that he's not the careless, heartless, feckless playboy people think he is. No, important as those memories are, it's the little things that make her ache and long and yearn. Milkshakes from Remy's. Pancakes. A Temptation Lane photograph. Unending stakeouts, long and dreary, but bearable when there's someone else in the car, sharing the tedium. A front door that's always answered - an apartment where she's always welcome. Teasing and joking and light-hearted banter.

She doesn't have any of that with Josh. She never has had.

She opens her eyes and impatiently blinks away the moisture she can feel gathering. This is ridiculous. _She_ is ridiculous. It's time to end this charade with Josh, just as she ended the charade with Tom, because blundering on isn't fair and it isn't satisfying. Not for anyone. Decision made, she reaches for her keys, stands up, and heads for the door.

It feels abrupt, but it isn't really. It's a decision that's been brewing for weeks, maybe months, and now that it's made, it almost feels overdue. And insignificant, come to that, because the real decision, the big one, is the one that comes next.

She never really saw a future for herself with Josh - she's known that from the start, even when she wasn't admitting it - but she's also never known what the hell she ought to do about Castle.

She leaves the apartment, closing the door behind herself decisively.

She'll worry about Castle tomorrow.


End file.
